I completely agree with you on this.

There were times in Morrowind where it took forever to locate something, but that was the exception.

I would like descriptions and directions for quests, but have the arrow as a backup option in case I get stuck.


My thoughts exactly!

There are a lot of good posts on this thread.

I also cannot fathom how some are missing the point of the article.

This is actually exactly what happens when you actually listen to the NPC's, and what they are saying.


Quests don't automatically activate when you receive them unless you have no other active quests.

Funny how, countless times, I'd receive a quest, and go off and find it just fine, only to realize that it had never activated, thus, I wasn't following quest arrows, but rather, what I had been told by NPC's about the quests.

It's like everyone is skipping through the dialogue, activating a quest marker, fast traveling to it, and then complaining about how the game offers no roleplay or exploration.

Not sure what game everyone is playing, because in my game, I actually listened to NPC's, quest markers told me what direction my objective was in, and I still had to find a route to get there myself. The quest marker tells you nothing more than East, West, North, South. But the world of Skyrim is much more than that. It's up and down, it's vertical as well as horizontal. So the quest arrow may tell you that your objective is straight ahead, but what it doesn't tell you is that your quest objective is actually 3 stories above you. The quest marker doesn't kill enemies for you. The quest marker doesn't talk to NPC's for you. The quest marker doesn't solve puzzles for you. The quest marker doesn't find a path through the mountains for you. The quest marker doesn't find a path around the river or lake for you.

The major quests all have detailed NPC directions telling you where to go, detailed that you can do the quest without a quest marker or prior knowledge if you pay attention to what they are saying. And the ones that don't, are no different than the "Let me mark it on your map" quests of Morrowind, which put big yellow blocks on your map telling you where to go.

And if you all want a journal with detailed instructions so badly, make your own journal. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and write down the directions that the NPC tells you, so that when you don't do the quest for 90 hours, and you see it in your quest log, you'll have your very own personal journal entry written just the way you want it. Afterall, a pen and paper RPG is what you all are looking for in the end anyways.

And if your response to that is that you shouldn't have to write out your own journal, the game should do it for you, well then to be quite honest, you're not much better than the audience that you accuse of being "dumbed down" because they don't want to go through the tedious activities that games in the past made you go through. Let's be honest, the level of discovery of Morrowind is vastly over exaggerated, the only difference between Morrowind and Oblivion or Skyrim is the fact that in Morrowind, you have to keep constantly opening up your map and journal to get the same exact results as Oblivion and Skyrim's map markers. Things weren't "dumbed down", they just simply removed the middle man. Morrowind's navigation wasn't somehow magically "smarter" than what we have now. It was just more tedious.

Granted, but I don't always do a quest as soon as I receive it. It would be very difficult to remember, especially since sometimes I end up going days without having time to play!

Great article. It seems most people fail to realize that the option to turn the markers off is completely useless to solve the problem because of the bad way the log is designed and the total lack of any directions.

Who most of the time don't tell you where you are supposed to find the item they are looking for. Go fetch the staff for Enthir but don't expect him to tell you where you're supposed to find it, he never mention the location because it's just another random dungeon [and no, that's not a Radiant quest]. Its marker just automagically appears on the map.

Which is totally and completely different from Morrowind's "Let me mark it on your map" repeated line of dialogue how?

You are literally complaining about a single line of repetitive dialogue that was emitted, but the end result is the exact same thing.

Total lack of directions? Hyperbole much? Yes, the journal lacks a detailed record, but speaking with the NPC will usually point you in the right direction. Except for Radiant AI quests. Which Enthir's staff is one.

From the wiki

it would be nice to have a journal page that i could dump my unwanted quests. and, be able to bring them back whenever i wanted.

what i can't stand is having quest ITEMS that i can't drop. ultimate handholding and totally irritates the heck out of me.

quest markers should obviously always be allowed to be turned off. no brainer.

Where did you read I compared the log to Morrowind's? Skyrim's is bad enough without the need to compare it to earlier games.

People who say that the magical arrow and botched up journal is the greatest invention of mankind conveniently forget that you can't really control what you accept. You can't take a dump without activating the Radiant AI of Doom which hands you yet another quest and you can't say "no, thanks" and drop it because that would be too logical. Nope. Instead you are given a magical arrow and journal with quests descriptions made so an average capuchin monkey with down syndrome can follow it.

Problem is, after 15-20 hours of gameplay you have visited around two cities, four small setlements, three dungeons and have 30+ quest in your journal. You probably know four from said quests in details, the others had become a blurred, fogged memory with no way to solve other than obediently following the indicator because the description fails to mention anything other than a name and basic instruction of "kill that sh*t or whatever". I don't care how the game wants to implement quests or if NPCs will mark my map like in MW or not. I just want quest descriptions extended to something that dosen't resemble a four-word-per-sentence reading exercise for illiterates.

This is slightly..OK really off topic but what you typed, coupled with your avatar made me laugh. It was almost as if i could hear your avatar saying it.

You can decline quests. Every quest given to you via NPC dialogue has a "No" option.

There are some quests that you overhear NPC's talking about, and the quest is put into your journal. But it's quite simple to decline those quests - don't do them. It's nothing more than a note in your journal that you overheard something.

It's not about whether or not Skyrim's journal system is the greatest thing ever made or not, it's about the fact that the complaining about it is completely overblown, and everything disliked about it can be overcome by paying a little bit of attention to the game, and a hint of self control.

Telepathy Skill 100/100

There are other options:

• For some quests, you might be given a map/marker to a general area "The goblin that stole my whatever ran into a cave near an old crabber's shack west of "town name". The marker doesn't take you right to the cave, but gives you an area which narrows it down then you explore that area.
  
• Criminal XYZ was last seen in town ABC. You go to the town, and ask around in the town, and someone mentions seeing him leaving down the road to town CDE. Maybe as you go down the road, you come across a fleeing farmer who says his wife was taken by a brigand matching the description of the outlaw you're tracking down, and he headed North East along a small trail near where the farmer's wagon was left when he fled.
  
• "I left my satchel somewhere in Whiterun, but I don't remember where. If you can locate it for me, I'll pay you 150 gold for your time".
  
• "The Wizard Arthromoor has an excavation setup to the Northwest of Morthal and due south of Solitude. He is an expert on Dwemer civilization, and can probably tell you more about that Dwemer Artificact you found"

One counter-example that comes readily to mind is the quest in Solitude to put out the lighthouse fire. I was just walking by, the NPC yanked me into dialog, there was no option to decline...the quest was in my log. If you look at the quest steps on the wiki, it even says you just get the quest by talking to him.



Another quest I recall that is similar is talking to Brynjolf for the first time....he constantly harasses you about the intro TG quest.

One problem is that your journal of miscellaneous quests gets filled with things like "Locate Grimsever"

That one got buried in my journal for such a long time I had to look Grimsever up on the wiki to remind myself what or who Grimsever was, who gave me the quest, and the reason for it. That info should have been included in the journal entry instead of just two vague words.

A daedric quest which I just got today told me to go find someone. Absolutely no information was given in the journal as to his location or in the dialogue. The only option was to turn the quest arrow on and look on the map to see where it was pointing which was actually somewhere far away in the wilderness which I could never have guessed or even stumbled across accidentally.

I somewhat agree with you. I thought the original article that was linked to made some other good points though. . . you can't delete/hide quests which you have no interest in doing, so your journal can get very cluttered with "trash quests". That's annoying.

However, the original article talked about being an [censored] because the quest markers "made me do it". That seems like a really stupid argument. I've certainly ignored quests which violated my character concept. I can't understand anyone who says "The quest made me be an [censored]".

It has the "No." option but still finds it's way into my journal. This wouldn't be a problem if I wouldn't forget a few days and twenty quests later what the XY mission was about (because -again- the description only mentions a name, action and maybe location but no info about the story or prequel: What happened? Why does it need to be killed/stolen/finded?) and end up following the arrow to find out and then do something I initially didn't want to.

I love quest markers. I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out where to go or having to tediously listen to every conversation I have so I don't miss where to go. Me and loads of other people feel the same way. Not everybody wants (in fact, very few do) a game where you have to spend more time searching for quests than you do actually playing the damn game.

What a truly heartbreaking, pointless view. When did FINDING the locations become outside of gameplay? Am I to believe that the only part of the game worth playing is the fighty bits at each end? There is a possibility that this post represents sarcasm, but if it does then it's very well done, if not then it's heartbreaking.

Finding stuff & interacting with the Ai is not a barrier to gameplay, it IS gameplay.

What's so heartbreaking about it? I agree. People are different. If I am forced to repeatedly do something that takes time, I lose interest.

That's not fair to label those who like quest markers as "people who haven't a clue." I don't have a problem with quest markers, but I'm not stupid either. Yes, I want to be challenged when I play a game, but I also want to be able to relax and enjoy the game without being frustrated. When I want to just explore the world without the worry of following a quest objective, I turn off the quest markers. If I stumble onto a quest objective on the way, great. Maybe I only have an hour to play, so I jump in, turn on a quest marker and head straight to the task at hand. There's nothing wrong with that.

So don't label people "clueless" because they want quest markers. It's demeaning and completely unwarranted.

That's part of the problem, nobody can pay that much attention to only said things. We're overflowed with quests with simple lines giving the clues, but there are no going back and examining what was said in a journal. I'm on a computer. I'd expect some builtin tools to even manually write notes if there isn't a journal. But there are none whatsoever - just those markers!

Again, I'm not against markers - I'm against the game being written for them in mind, and only them, instead of supporting something "non casual" gamers can endure.

i agree that self-control is the key. but, remember that we're on a forum discussing a game and so things become micro scoped and dissected. that needs to be understood. it's like talking about politics with your family vs. talking about politics in an open forum. totally different.

for me, a better developed system is obvious. improvement is a must. further development and integration is a no brainer.

not being able to drop certain quest items is obviously WRONG because some have weight. acceptance vs decline should be allowed.

Disagree 100% with the article, sounds like an FB whining about spilled milk.

1st. in Skyrim you can have quest markers turned on or off, that is a huge change from Oblivion/Fallout 3 New Vegas where you couldn't turn the marker off.

2nd. once a marker hits your map you can press start and turn it off, keep doing that for a dozen times and the game will no longer put quest markers on your map unless you click the marker on.

3rd and the most important point sometimes it's very hard to find somebody without a quest marker. Try finding Kharjo when you get his moon amulet without the quest markers, unless your lucky you'll be spending a good couple of hours searching for him. You can blame that on a bad journal design, however I think the Journal from Oblivion broke a bit of character immersion because I don't know if my character would think the exact same thing as what's being written in the journal, with Skyrim it's very basic which is a good thing.

4th. Quests are optional to do, nobody is forcing you to complete them except the tutorial, just a couple of seconds and the marker is gone until you click it back on.

Couldn't agree more with the article. There is no 'figure this out for yourself' as you are directed everywhere. Go to this marker to solve the quest.

Yes you can listen to what the NPC's are saying, but as mentioned upthread, it would be difficult to remember them all this way. The journal should be your guide. That's how i would like to play it.

I'm still enjoying the game but the questing experience is poor. Very very poor. I'm just glad that i haven't yet finished exploring the map as this is the main appeal for me, questing is secondary. Kinda sad really.